The Last Decision
The Last Decision - meaning Summary
Declining Toward a Decision
The poem presents a speaker who enumerates small losses—failing eyesight, diminished appetite, impaired hearing—and frames each as a reason to give up ordinary activities. Those incremental concessions build a pattern of resignation that culminates in the final, sweeping choice to abandon life itself. The voice is calm and pragmatic, treating aging not as melodrama but as a sequence of diminishing options that make death seem like the last, rational decision.
Read Complete AnalysesThe print is too small, distressing me. Wavering black things on the page. Wriggling polliwogs all about. I know it's my age. I'll have to give up reading. The food is too rich, revolting me. I swallow it hot or force it down cold, and wait all day as it sits in my throat. Tired as I am, I know I've grown old. I'll have to give up eating. My children's concerns are tiring me. They stand at my bed and move their lips, and I cannot hear one single word. I'd rather give up listening. Life is too busy, wearying me. Questions and answers and heavy thought. I've subtracted and added and multiplied, and all my figuring has come to naught. Today I'll give up living.
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